To do more than 75 years of farming and harvesting takes more than just hard work and dedication, although those are key aspects.

Farming for such a long time requires someone with a passion and understanding of the agricultural trade.

Gordon Hankins, 93, of Waverly is one of those certain someones.

Hankins first began farming on his own at 17 after receiving his high school graduation in Waverly, although he had been working on the farm throughout his childhood. His dad, Joe, was having back problems and Hankins, who had been doing work all over the farm his family worked, had to put in the crop for the year.

“He could do some, but he couldn’t drive a tractor or anything like that,” Hankins said. “When we were kids you learned everything then so I knew how to do everything, just needed the supervision for it.”

After that, farming became a way of life and a natural living for Hankins. Joe eventually got a state job and Gordon Hankins married Eloise Hankins, who played just as much a role of keeping the farm going as anyone along with raising their three children.

“She was a farm girl that was born south of Waverly,” Hankins said. “She’d done everything. She drove tractors, she hauled the grain, she always hauled the grain.”

On reflecting on his career, Hankins said the thing he misses most in the world is his wife, who succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease in January.

“She’s what I miss the most,” Hankins said. “She was part of the corporation. Anything you could do, she could do it and if you needed some help she was always there. … She was never hard to get along with.”

Hankins eventually was offered the farmhouse on the property he had been working since 1938 and he purchased the home. Over the years, he continued to rent more and more land. At his busiest, Hankins said that he was farming around 1,600 acres.

He continued to get people to come to him to make their land produce a more plentiful and higher quality crop. Hankins secret, he said, is the pride he puts into his work and his commitment to making the land the best it can be.

“I never tried to rent a piece of land in my life, people would just come to me and want to rent it to me,” he said. “The people we farm for, they’re proud of that land so I feel like I ought to keep it as nice as I can for them. I know they appreciate that.”

In all his years, Hankins said that he has had one bad year in 1954 when the heat was so bad it caused some of his corn to not produce hardly any ears at all. Luckily, he said, they had a supply of hogs that kept the family afloat.

Although much has changed over the years, the one change that has really stuck out to Hankins is the lack of support from neighbors as family farms have died off and given way to corporate farms.

“No money ever exchanged hands. It always worked that if you got done you’d go and help your neighbors and if they got done they’d come and help you,” Hankins said. “If his tractor broke down and yours was available he just came and got it. That was the way things worked. That’s what I miss most. They’re all gone, in this area around me, there were 21 people that used to be farmers. They’re all gone now. … There are no people to buy this stuff anymore. They’re big farmers anymore, there are no individuals.”

That’s not to say that things are better back then they were now or vice versa, he added.

“That’s just how it is,” Hankins said.

Nowadays, Hankins’ son Van and several of his grandchildren farm the land and Hankins himself does whatever odd jobs need doing, such as running a combine or tractor here or there.

Even with all the changes over the years with children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren being born, neighbors coming and going, land being bought and sold, farming has always been a constant in Hankins’ life.

That’s something that he’s thankful for.

“I help every year put the crop in and take it out,” he said. “I enjoy doing it. Always have enjoyed it. Now there’s times something where come along that you don’t enjoy but, you know, I really enjoy it.”

Nick Draper can be reached at 217-245-6121, ext. 1223, or on Twitter @nick_draper.